Why do Americans drink and drive so much?

5 in.

Why didn't you learn your lesson?

americans are legit mentally deficient

●■

Someone probably called him gay when he mentioned taking the bus so he had to show he was a big man by driving anyway

because DUIs aren't a big deal. they're only bad if you're poor and don't know a good lawyer

Were you dealt with harshly as a result? The US in particular seems fond of making jails terrible for even minor crimes (e.g. fully naked group strip searches, overcrowding, exposing them to violence, general dehumanization etc)

i was treated worse while dealing with the first one than the second one because i assume they were trying to scare me. the second one, i was only in the county lock-up for like 4 hours

Do you do this regularly?

no

That doesn't surprise me. People love to think that they're doing a good thing when they act like douchebags like that.

Because their beers are basically flavored water.

Shitty or nonexistent public transportation, unhealthy drinking culture which encourages people (especially kids) to hide their drinking rather than ask for help from friends and family, along with ridiculous DUI laws that make it absurdly easy to get one (sleeping in the backseat with the engine running so you can turn the heater on because it's negative 12 out? Lol DUI for you)

It's one of many reasons I'm an expat

how into expat?

>The US in particular seems fond of making jails terrible for even minor crimes
It's not that the US actively WATNS to make jails terrible, it's that a large portions of the jails are privately-run, and these privately-run prisons make more money if they cut corners in safety, food, guard training, etc.

Fact

They even drink beer while driving...

Learn a language. Get a job overseas.

It's a hell of a lot easier if you do what I did and studied the language at a university with a robust foreign language school, with a strong study abroad program and a program to help get internships abroad.

Also look into getting a foreign spouse, I haven't because I don't need to, but it WILL save you a hell of a lot of time.

Do you miss America

could i get a foreign spouse and just stay with her for a year or two then ditch her? or would that get me deported?

Also FFS, don't major in the language (you can double major in it though, if you can handle the course load). Major in something useful. You think they need more german speakers in Germany?

how drunk were you when you got your duis

Good question. Americans for whatever reason have this culture where drinking is seen as pretty cool, fun and social. It's ingrained into you by media and peers that in high school, you need to experience a house party where alcohol flows freely or went to prom and drank the spiked punch. In college, you should be drinking and have raped at least one woman while intoxicated.

I don't understand the fascination amongst Americans but I got sucked into it. As a dirty spic, we were taught to drink casually and socially. Any deviation from that (like drinking by yourself without presence of food or friends) makes you a borracho. I don't know what it is about white people but they got serious issues. My white bf was an awful, violent ex-alcoholic and so were some of his friends.

A little bit, but that goes away whenever I turn on the news. The positives of living here beat out basically everything America had.
If you get your citizenship first, you would be able to stay. But you'd be a serious fucking dick. That person would be putting a lot of their assets on the line for your citizenship.

What's better about living there?

Autobahns

How? Germany seems booring to me

This isn't an american thing only. Brits are even worse than us.

Why do Americans drink water from the shower and sink? Buy a fucking filter.

Also forgot to add that the bf and his friends all have at least one DUI. Considering how they got them, I have no sympathy and they fucking deserve it. The reasons behind how they got it is so fucking retarded that you can't give them the slightest bit of sympathy. Its easy to not drink and drive. I've been lucky so far and hope it stays that way, but then again I don't drink as much.

Because it's clean?

Want to party

Go walking [assuming its not too far, keep in mind that lots of americans hate walking] or on public transit [assuming its still running at a decent schedule long after the evening work rush]: Can get arrested for being "public drunkenness". If police don't like you and see that you are walking funny they will give you ticket.
Ride a bike: That is also DUI
So you just have to beg friends and that can be embarrassing. They dont want to keep giving you rides and going out of their way for you and they told you to stop drinking.

Thats why I always drink at home.

Because our cities are laid out entirely for cars.
Drunk people can't hop on a bus or a train to get home, and prettymuch no one can walk home.

Walkability is really popular lately but atm it's only for the wealthy; the poor white areas are still car-dependent.

Wut almost every American city has a bus system

That

I don't think Americans uninanimously hate walking. But for where most Americans live, walking is incredibly inconvenient compared to European or Latin American cities.

At the same time I have no idea how bars are even allowed in shopping strips. Obviously people are going to drink and drive if you have to drive to get to the bar.

Attached: strip mall bar.jpg (550x366, 39K)

The Travel. Germany alone is great, but with the Schengen area? Vacations are cheaper, and you have a hell of a lot more options.
adding on to this, the transport infrastructure. You don't need a car to live here. If you live close to the city, a bike is more than enough. The trains will get you where you need to go otherwise.
The people are generally a hell of a lot nicer, even in big cities like Hamburg and Berlin.
Life is so, i dunno, relaxed. In America, to succeed, you gotta work AT LEAST 40, but realistically like 50, 60 hours a week. Here, if you're working 40 hours a week, you're a workaholic. People have more free time, and they spend it with friends and family.
Politics don't dominate the news cycle. Everyone isn't stressing out 24/7 about the latest scandal. I genuinely hear almost as much about American politics as I do german.
And of course, the Health Care. Not only is it more therapy-focused instead of medication focused (no opioid epidemic in germany, wonder why?), but if I do need medication, I don't have to pay out the ass for a month's supply.

Boring can be good. But Germany isn't boring, just slower-paced. Think a sunday drive instead of a drag race.

And they universally suck ass

p much this. social media and shit pushes everyone to drink and have fun and that being drunk is so awesome. i started drinking at 14 and im 26 now and havent stopped

>Italian talking about machismo culture

Because in America the drinking spots are located far from residential areas.

In Britain you have pubs and it's kind of a hangout for the community; young old or in between. It's less about getting drunk and more about getting a pint, and it's in the neighborhood.
In America you have to travel a long way to go to the bar unless you already live by downtown.

it is
There are worse things than boring though
e.g. getting shot

Don't you have small bars in residential areas?

The existence of machismo in Italy doesn't magically erase the fact that people in America die behind the wheel because they're scared of being called a pussy.
Because dying in a fucking ditch is totally the manly thing to do.

>In America, to succeed, you gotta work AT LEAST 40, but realistically like 50, 60 hours a week. Here, if you're working 40 hours a week, you're a workaholic. People have more free time, and they spend it with friends and family.

that statement makes me want to end my life

Honestly there's no fucking reason for anyone to be getting a DUI in this day and age. Uber, Lyft, and other taxi services exist that can pick you up at the bar and drop your dumb ass at home. If you're drinking and decided to drive, bike or walk home (depending on your local laws) then you're fucking up.

That's not really stopping you from getting a cab/bus though, is it?

Not often. Zoning laws usually prevent stuff like that, unless the bar in question was grandfathered in

that's retarded, honestly. imagine a life without Eckkneipen

Some areas do, but I would not say that it's a common thing, at least in my state/area.

The worst part is that in a lot of offices most of those 50-60 hours will be unpaid. You're just expected to do them if you want to get ahead.

>they universally suck
Maybe compared to Germany but they are not that bad
Stop being a negative nancy.
In cities yes not in the suburbs tho

Americans drink less than other westerners.

Americans have roughly the same rate of auto accidents per mile driven as Europeans.
However, Americans drive much much more than europeans.
Auto accidents are one of the leading causes of death for americans.
Auto accidents are the leading cause of death for American minors.

However we get heart disease because we spend so little time walking and so much time sitting in a car.

Attached: Causes_of_death_by_age_group_(percent).png (768x468, 27K)

Welcome to america, home of the Second Great Awakening and Prohibition.

Yeah. My dad is 60 and still works 60+ hours a week for fucking nothing. Shit is fucked, my man.

No absolutely not. But when you live far from the drinking spot, a cab is expensive.
However American public transport is terrible, I've never ridden a bus in my city my entire life, I only use buses when I go to other cities. And I literally live across the street from a bus stop.

This. American boomers regulate businesses out of their neighborhood because they think it ruins the neighborhood. But actually having a mix of uses adds to the neighborhood value and makes things more convenient.

Why not just retire. He doesn't have a 401k?

You should try using the bus. It's not bad. I use them all the time and nothing ever happened to me.

i find this shit p hard to believe. look at all the media thats pushed on young adults and teenagers that romanticizes drinking. but i guess in a way i can also believe it cause my peers use shit like uber and lyft on a night out, and are more likely than older generations to crash at a homies place

>retiring at 60
>having a viable 401k at 60
what kind of fantasy, 1950's-esque world do you live in where this is something that somebody can "just"do?

Ironically it's always the right wing "small government" types who protest the hardest when someone tries to open a business in their neighborhood.

Recently a guy was going to build a luxury hotel in my parents' suburb. 5 stories.
But all the right-wingers complained to city government that he needed to build 100 more parking spaces and make the building stories.
But there wasn't room for all that, so the guy built the hotel in another city.

Which is stupid, because that suburb's downtown area is having a hard time retaining businesses. Shops close. With a nice luxury hotel the local businesses would have been supported.
Cars damage the american economy in dozens of ways.

>tfw zoning talk again
>tfw my house is within 15min walking distance of 5 supermarkets, at least half a dozen bars, a club, a gym and an uncounted amount of misc kinds of stores/shops
>tfw almost every block in the city is like this in some measure

Feels good to live in a country that doesn't build cities out of giant mono-use bubbles built hours (by car) apart from eachother.

Attached: 1371165400023.jpg (306x273, 89K)

I think a LOT of Americans do hate walking. Driving is almost always more convenient, so you can always excuse it that way. Cars are faster than feet, a 1 hr walk is a 2 min drive (exaggerating there but not by much). So easy to jump in a car and be there in a flash vs slowly walk there.

I used to have to walk/take a bus everywhere because I was poor and no car. Bus/walk to work, bus/walk to laundromat, bus/walk to store, bus/walk to home, bus/walk to party. Nowadays? Fuck the bus and fuck walking lol Im gonna drive.

>shopping strips
You can walk to a shopping strip too.

I always mean to, but I already live in a historic neighborhood by downtown so I tend to drive or bike anywhere I'm going.
My city just built a nice new bus terminal but still the transit system here is inconvenient compared to larger american cities. I think it will gradually improve over time.

>tfw my house is within 15min walking distance of 5 supermarkets, at least half a dozen bars, a club, a gym and an uncounted amount of misc kinds of stores/shops

sounds really nice

It's the same for except of 15 minutes of walking it's 15 minutes of driving and even less. And I like using my car. Don't know why people complain and net pick at it this much.

Well you're wrong. Walkabaility is the single most valuable commodity in American real estate. Look it up.

wsj.com/articles/l-a-s-hottest-new-real-estate-amenity-walkability-1525966515

nar.realtor/newsroom/walkable-urban-places-are-the-future-of-real-estate-development

Don't take my word for it, look up Urbanism and find out real city development.

Americans have been pushing hard to "fix" zoning laws and urban sprawl. Most real estate developers here are trying to make neighborhoods more walkable but correcting sprawl is a complex and expensive process. It just takes time.

I think with more millennial use, the public transportation will improve. I live in a metro area with 3+ million people around and public transit can pretty much take you anywhere. I use the bus often to get to my college, and so do a lot of other students. But I also suspect that has to do with the metro area being landlocked and dying for space.

This. It's only in recent years that Americans have been trying to get into neighborhoods where everything is in reach without the use of a car. This is even more true in bigger cities.

It's less pleasant than walking for many, on top of being a pretty big cost to bear simply for the privilege of getting where you need to be.
You have to get into your car, fight traffic, get there, find a parking spot (which might or might not be close, requiring walking anyway), do what you have to do, walk back to your parking spot, fight traffic again, then find parking again...

...or just walk there and be done with it, for free, getting healthier in the process.

It doesn't take much to see why, for people living anywhere else, it looks like a really bad way of living.

And yet Americans even in super "walkable" cities have totally clogged everything with cars

>walkable-urban-places-are-the-future-of-real-estate-development
>Common sense policy that's literally as old as Greek Polises from thousands of years ago is a novel and futuristic idea for America

Every dense area in the developed world has traffic. Wherever cars go, they cause traffic. Adding lanes to a highway actually makes traffic worse on that highway. There is nothing under the sun that reduces traffic, besides people leaving the area.
You need to learn some basic logic or basic subject matter on this, honestly.

I live smack in the middle of suburbia (La Grange, IL look it up on google maps if you want)
I am within 20 mins walking distance of 8 supermarkets, well over a dozen bars, 11 gyms, 0 clubs and yes, countless stores. (You think "stores" are something in Italy only?)

And a train station too that can take you to SHITcago if you want to see a giant metallic bean.

Yes it is slightly controversial in America because you have tards like who ignore logic and insist on making America dependent on cars for everyone even though it's more expensive and less convenient for our society. Also boomers doing shit like And forcing private landowners to make their city car-dependent. They use the government as a tool to decrease walkability, then turn around say they support small government. Really weird, but they're a dying minority.

>(You think "stores" are something in Italy only?)
Considering you have literally outlawed people from opening them in many residential blocks, yes.
I just wanted an umbrella term for places that weren't a strip mall or a grocery store.

Drving is not very costly here.
There is no huge traffic whene you going from your residential area to a local commercial area. You will find traffic when you are going to a big city. Finding a parking spot is not hard in american suburban areas. And yoy forget thw advantage of cars being faster and having a trunk

So everything you like about your suburbia is everything non-suburban about it. Nice.

>And yoy forget thw advantage of cars being faster and having a trunk
But you don't need it to be faster if the store is close, and you don't need the trunk if you can just do your shopping normally, instead of planning grocery shopping trips like you have to stock up for a long winter.
As small of a cost as it might be, it's still an extra that's making you unhealthier by the day, one that wouldn't need to be there in a normally planned city anywhere else.

>tards like
I just like driving in suburban america. It's not as bad as you picture. You can fidn everything in your township or county at worst
Ok cities must be walkable and have good public transport. But the suburbs are different

It's important to remember how federalism works. Many municipalities don't let homes and stores intermingle, but many others do. It's a case-by-case basis. America is never a monolith, especially on such a specific subject

They didn't just outlaw stores. They ban people from opening bed and breakfasts out of their home and in some cases even running a home office (not joking).

You also can't put a fence in your front yard in the vast majority of suburban america.

Driving is extremely costly. It's the most costly form of transportation. The government subsidizes the shit out of the oil that goes in your gas tank and paves your roads and highways ($450bil/yr on road maintenance), and the oil that makes up your tires. Parking decks cost over $30,000 per parking space. We pay for driving one way or the other, in America we like to brush it under the rug to keep you under the illusion that car-dependency is fine.

I don't hate suburbia or cars. I never said driving was bad, I love cars. But in the US we subsidize cars over every other mode of transportation, and most Americans don't realize the vast policy inequality going on that supports cars. It's incredibly expensive to our public budget and even our dependency on oil drives us to do shit like ally with Saudi Arabia.

Driving is only ubiquitous in America because the government regulates everything else out of being practical and spends fucktons subsidizing cars and car infrastructure. It is not consumer preference. When cars are the only option for most people, obviously most people will use cars.

im glad we have a culture of respnsible drinkers who never do this

>one wrong means everything else is also wrong

Peoplekind everyone.

That’s untrue for jail. When the police picks you off the road they bring you to a county jail first.

It's not cheaper on the personal level, you pay for it in taxes.

Hell I'm in walking distance of 3 train stations, and they can all take you to shitcago. Plus tons of stores, bars, gyms, multiple parks and the world's largest arcade all located in suburbialand. And a zoo in 40 mins walking distance too ("one of the nations largest"). Amazing.

What I like about suburbia:
1) Low(er) traffic
2) Quiet
3) Cheaper to live
4) Less fru fru hipster garbage
5) No giant metallic beans and tourist garbage
6) Less extreme wealth inequality (more moderate wealth inequality with apartment peasants and detached housing lords, not as much people literally starving and begging 1%ers on the street for pocket change)

Personally I don't give a shit about stores or gyms though I've never seen a suburb without them. Restaurants and bars are a guilty pleasure where but I've likewise never seen a suburb without restaurants/bars. I generally prefer the kind of quiet suburban working class bars where you relax with a couple $5 beers after getting off the train vs. the kind of clubs or hipstershit I've encountered in shitcago though I make a point never to stay there for long. The bar in union station is good though.
I do "enjoy" grocery stores I guess (as much as I can "enjoy" a store), they are way more common in suburbia than in the city (where real estate is expensive and crime is higher).

Unlike Detroit suburbs I notice that Shitcago suburbs have more of the small/local business feel, whereas Shitcago itself is feels dominated by big chains (and how!). In Detroit its flipped.

What don’t you drink and drive lol, I do it at least 2-3 times a week

Based falseflag poster

Attached: 1325496260761.png (177x177, 44K)

I’m a responsible driver and afraid of losing my license or my ability to walk.
I used to drink and drive my scooter though, which might actually be even more dangerous

So can we actually get back to the fucking topic of the thread?

I'm curious as to why someone who already had a DUI would do it again. Here in Commiefornia they're extra expensive and you can be thrown in jail for the first offense. So why even do it again? I don't fucking get it.